Founders Imperial Stout

Tomorrow morning we’re off to Portland. We’re both so ready for vacation. The weather doesn’t look awesome, but neither of give a crap! We’ve got a laundry list of places to visit, including great breweries, bars, and brew pubs. The camera is definitely coming along for the ride, so you can expect some good pictures and a recap come Sunday or Monday.

Tonight I’m settling in with this Founders Imperial Stout and watching the Bruins blow game 6 of the Flyers playoff series. I’m not going to get started on the topic, because the team is driving me nuts right now.

I haven’t had a stout in probably over a week now, so I’m definitely pumped to get back to one. Any brew from Founders is a great place to start.

The brew pours out slimy-like. I think the word is viscous? Looked like a flat soda at first, but slowly built up a small amount of dark tan head.

Smells of booze and coffee. Tastes of coffee and finishes quite bitter in a dark chocolate kinda way. I’m also picking up some other sweetness, which I’ll classify as toffee.

I chilled this beer for a relatively short period (~1 hr) before drinking. I can count the number of times I’ve done that on one hand. In this particular case, I thought that the style of beer was meant to be drunkified at damn near room temperature anyway, which was the main reasoning. Beer temperature is fresh on my mind, as a couple of articles on the topic have been posted to the blogosphere this week. I personally don’t put a whole lot of thought into temperature.

I don't check exact temperature, but I do keep my beer in the fridge for a few hours prior to drinking (I actually store a lot of beer in my fridge as I'm not drinking as much as I used to). I can usually tell if it's at about the proper temp by feeling the bottle/glass.

I'd rather have it too cold and then let it warm up either in the bottle or the glass prior to drinking than have it too warm and throw it in the fridge shortly before drinking trying to get it to cool down to the proper temp. In other words, it's easier to let a beer warm up to proper temp than cool down.

Something else you should keep in mind is that room temperature and cellar temperature are very different. Very few beers should be had at room temp. Imperial stouts are not one of them. They should be had at cellar temp, which is about 50°F. Room temp is generally considered to be 65-70°F.